Inmate waiting 40 years finally gets appeal hearing. But COVID-19 may shut down court.
More than halfway through an 80-year sentence for a rape he says he didn’t commit, Ronnie Long has received what may be his last best chance for freedom: a hearing before the full Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On Monday, the majority of the judges on the country’s second highest court voted to hear Long’s arguments that his 44-year-old conviction in North Carolina should be thrown out.
While they cheered the decision, Long’s attorneys said their client faces a more immediate threat: the coronavirus.
Jamie Lau, executive director of Duke’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic, told the Observer on Monday that he fears the pandemic could delay Long’s hearing indefinitely while also putting Long, a state inmate, at risk of contracting the disease.
On Tuesday, the appeals court announced that due to the spread of COVID-19 it was closing its offices in Richmond, Va., to the public and was postponing its docket this week and again in April.
“Given that, the right thing for the State of North Carolina to do is for Gov. (Roy) Cooper and Attorney General (Josh) Stein to work together to overturn his conviction and send him home,” Lau said in an email.
“The circumstances of his incarceration make him vulnerable, and we hope that his health is protected so he can see the day that justice is finally achieved and he is free.”
A spokeswoman for Stein, whose staff has defended Long’s prosecution in the most recent hearings, said the attorney general’s office cannot comment on an ongoing case.
Convicted by an all-white jury
Long, of Concord, has passed the midway point of the sentence handed down by the all-white Cabarrus County jury that convicted him of raping the wife of an executive at Cannon Mills, the signature industry of what was then a company town.
Long was 19 when he was arrested. He would be close to 100 if he lives long enough to finish his prison stay.
He has long argued his innocence. His decades of appeals have been bolstered by a growing mound of proof that police, state officials and Long’s prosecutor withheld significant evidence from his lawyers at his trial.
As recently as 2015 — almost 40 years after the verdict — Long’s attorneys learned of 43 fingerprints Concord police collected from the rape scene but never shared. None of the prints matched Long’s, court documents show.
In January, a divided three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit refused to reopen Long’s case.
The majority opinion — written by Judge Julius Richardson, a former South Carolina prosecutor — acknowledged that past state and local officials had conspired to corrupt Long’s trial. But the ruling upheld earlier N.C. and federal court opinions that evidence kept secret from Long in 1976 would not have changed the jury’s original verdict.
Richardson’s conclusion drew a withering rebuke from appeals court colleague, Judge Stephanie Thacker, who homed in on “the slow stubborn drip of undisclosed evidence that the state originally claimed did not exist.”
“In this circumstances, (Long) must prevail,” Thacker wrote. “To hold otherwise would provide incentive for the state to lie, obfuscate and withhold evidence for a long enough period ... That, I cannot abide.”
Thacker’s dissent, while unsuccessful, gave Long’s attorneys an opening to appeal to the full Fourth Circuit. The court hears appeals from the Carolinas, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia.
Now, Long and his defense team await what may be Long’s last stand in federal court.
“It is incredibly heartbreaking knowing that Ronnie has spent nearly 44 years in prison for a crime he did not commit,” Lau said.
“But this decision offers hope, and hope is what makes it possible for Ronnie to live through this nightmare each day, week, and year.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 1:31 PM.
